by Harold Lamb
As she spoke Nadesha shivered, because she half-believed the dogs would be set upon her, and the dark gorge was not a pleasant place.
“Have you a message from the Khan or your father?”
“Would a noyon send speech by a woman?”
“Wait, then.”
It was quite dark before Loosang opened the flap of his tent. The girl’s quick ears had caught the clink of coins. She wondered what Loosang did with the Russian money. He did not carry it along with him in the wagon, which would have been burdened by the extra weight. The Tatars were sure of that. They believed the coins disappeared during the ritual of the lama. Nadesha wondered.
When she climbed through the opening she gave an exclamation of surprize. A small fire glowed on some stones with a reddish hue. From it came a sweetish odor from some dried roots. Behind the fire sat what seemed to be a painted statue, draped in a yellow cassock, with waistcoat of cloth of gold, and purple apron. A high hat gleamed with lacquer work above a mask-like face.
Nadesha knew that still greater emotion was expected of her, and she pressed her face to the floor, clasping her hands behind her black coils of hair. Loosang’s eyes scanned the slender shoulders of the girl, noting her supple arms and the smooth skin of her neck.
“You did not come hither to sit by a fire,” he said slowly. “I have been expecting you. Sit by my side and speak when you are ready.”
There were cushions near the lama, and Nadesha felt very comfortable. Her cheeks had fallen in a little from hunger and her eyes were overbright. She had put on a chaplet of pearls and a silk coat and washed her skin in oil and rose water.
“if I wished it,” Loosang observed, “you would not leave the tent on your feet, and the clogs would soon make of you a thing of knitted bones. Two moons ago you went against my will when you saved the giaour his life. Why did you do that?”
“I am holding the captive for a price.”
“It must be a big price. The day after Zebek Dortshi attacked the giaour you sent your father to Ubaka Khan. Norbo asked the Khan to declare to the Horde that the life of your captive must be spared. What is the price?”
“Protection for me.”
“From whom?”
“From the gods, and especially Bon.”
For some time Loosang gazed into the fire, occasionally placing upon it another root or stick of incense wood. When he spoke his high voice was tinged with suspicion.
“What makes you seek my protection, daughter of Norbo?”
Nadesha was aware that she was being studied covertly. She cradled her chin in her hands and pouted mischievously.
“Kai! Are not the gods greater than the Khan, who is a man?”
“Truly. Ubaka Khan has caused much suffering among his people. Seventy thousand souls have gone out, like candles in the wind, since the march began. In each family one lies sick. The wolves and the vultures follow the trail of the Horde. Many more will die.”
“Of course.” Nadesha nodded confidentially.
“Food and fodder are at an end. The clans hunt and pillage as they can. The men of the Khan’s own cavalry are murmuring.” Loosang knew that Nadesha was shrewd; he had watched the girl and found her to his liking. “So you think the day will soon be at hand when you must seek aid of the gods?”
“Aye,” the girl answered. “The day will come, within this moon that is now new. Then the Horde will cross the Kangar Desert; at the end of the desert they will turn to you to lead the way. Whither?”
Loosang felt a sting of suspicion. But the girl at his side was open-eyed, and her brow was without guile. Still, he answered craftily.
“Whatever will happen is the will of the gods. For nine days I shall sleep, and my dreams will search out the far places of the spirit world so that I may know what is ordained.” Loosang thought for a moment. “If the giaour is not given into my hands by Ubaka Khan at the end of the sleep evil will come against the Horde. Aye, for one thing—” his hand caught the girl’s wrist—“Alashan will be slain by your prisoner.”
Nadesha tossed her head.
“My thoughts are not for the son of the Khan.”
“Nor for the lion-haired giaour.”
Here Nadesha took refuge in a smile. Instead of finding out things from the lama, the secrets of her heart were being probed. When the Persian Tatar smiled it warmed the blood of men, for her lips were a lure.
“True, my lama.” No more. But the smile and the words kindled the imagination of the priest.
“Nor do you love the Persian khan, Zebek Dortshi, daughter of Norbo.”
“Again, most true. Though Zebek Dortshi will fly higher and faster than Alashan. A noon ago at the Ukim the noyon schemed so cleverly that the son of the Khan was within a sword’s edge of being slain. Is it not so?”
Suspicion having passed from the mind of Loosang, he did not deny this. Nadesha half-caught her breath, for Alashan had told her about the act of Zebek Dortshi at the gorge and her wit had penetrated its motive.
“It is you, little dove,” he whispered almost to himself, “who will look down upon a kingdom at your feet, and your petal-fingers shall play with jewels.”
His long hand went out and touched Nadesha’s forehead. It was as if a snake had crawled across her face, but she did not move. Only when the hand crept down to her throat and lingered on the vein of blood that was like a pulse, she spoke.
“I could love one greater than the giaour. At the end of this moon I will deliver my prisoner to you.”
“Tahil-tebihou—the bargain is struck.”
“Then where is my kingdom?”
Throwing back her head, the girl laughed softly at the surprize of the priest.
To play on the fancy of Nadesha, Loosang described to her the temple of Bon that stood at the edge of the Kangar upon a wide river that flowed down from the mountains of Tibet—the house of Bon, where the face of the great god peered out from the cliff itself, and monks, both men and women, passed their lives at the palace of the god.
They who gave up their souls to Bon, the Destroyer of earthly things, would taste paradise. In the place of their worship were paintings as old as the memory of man. The floors were jade, covered with silken rugs from Bokhara. The masters of the monks were warriors who wore gold and scarlet and carried standards as tall as the trees. Jewels were in their saddles, for they were servants of the Dalai Lama, who was the living Buddha, reborn during three times three thousand years.
And the master of the lamasery—
“I am chutuktu, abbot, of that lamasery which is at Sonkor, on the edge of the Kangar. And I have been lama of the Black Kirghiz, the greatest of the Tatar tribes of Asia.”
So spoke Loosang, his breath warm against the hair of the girl. He had the gift of making others see clearly what he painted with words.
“When I ride back to Sonkor the sakyas will carry candles before me on the terraces. A chutuktu is a prince, for the Dalai Lama is a king. I shall go back—” just for a second he hesitated—“when my work here is done.”
This time it was Nadesha who leaned forward to feed the fire. A startling thought had come to her, and she wished to hide her face. If the lama should guess what was in her mind, she would not see the light of the next sunrise, nor would the Master of the Herds know what fate had befallen his daughter, for Nadesha had come secretly to the yurt of Loosang.
Even as she bent down she was seized in an iron grasp and pulled back so that she lay across the knees of the priest. The face of Loosang had changed, as if he had put on one of his masks. His small eyes burned!
But it was passion and not suspicion that had stung him to seize the girl. So Nadesha saw in a flash. Yet his touch upon her neck and shoulder brought the color flooding into her cheeks. She twisted in his grasp, whipping out a knife from her khalat.
Before Loosang could move, she had placed the point of the curved dagger against his throat and pressed it in a little. The lama snarled angrily as his head, perforce, bent back. Then the
knife was withdrawn and he saw Nadesha sitting beside him quietly, the dagger secreted again.
“You are a fool and a child!” he ejaculated, the harsh Tibetan accent creeping into his words. “No one has drawn steel against me, who can not be hurt by steel.”
The girl reflected that he seemed unwilling to put the matter to a test.
“No one has laid hand on me before this,” she responded calmly. “Now it is in my mind that you lied to me about the kingdom of Sonkor where the Kirghiz are—”
“Lied? I?” Loosang, for the first time, was answering blindly the thrusts of the Tatar. He laughed shrilly. “Nay, your own eyes will see it. I will take you there.”
“That is part of the bargain.”
“Good. It shall be done, and sooner than you think.”
For his part, the lama had tasted a little of the beauty of Nadesha. Now he meant to possess her. In this he could be patient. As for Nadesha, she had had a vision of a great doom preparing for the clans, for the Wolf clan and her father and the Khan. It was no more than a vision as yet, a mingling of the power of Loosang, the power of the Black Kirghiz, and the wiles of Zebek Dortshi. She felt as if she stood at the edge of a pit that was being dug.
But there was nothing that she could say to Norbo. There was only one thing to do—to be taken to Sonkor and there to learn what truth was in her fears. So, to this end, she prepared to play her part. She even thought of the curious disappearance of the money that had been brought to Loosang.
Her own bag was visible in a corner of the yurt, but the store of coins that had passed into the hands of the lama was not to be seen. Evidently he had disposed of them in some way.
Meanwhile the lama had bent his head to one side as if listening.
“I hear the voices of the council, the sarga of the Torguts, that is assembled in the tents of Ubaka Khan,” he said. “They are cattle, those ancient ones of the Horde who bend the head to Natagai.”
“True,” assented Nadesha, wondering what he was leading up to.
She had known the council was in session to debate a message received from General Traubenberg, who was pursuing the Horde. The Russian offered pardon to all clans that would turn back with him to the Volga. So this night the issue must be decided, whether to press on to the Ili or retrace their steps to the Volga.
Seeing the hunger written in the thin cheeks of the girl, Loosang handed her a bowl of sweetmeats.
“The Khan is still as great as the lama,” observed he dryly. “He is a yak, but the herd follows its leader. So—I hear his words:
“‘My brothers of the tents, we are knit together as flesh with bone. Where one clan goes, all must ride. Or we shall be dust before the wind? Who would be a slave?’”
Loosang mimicked the slow, heavy tones of the Khan and threw his voice so that it seemed to come from the tent top. The girl ceased eating and waited anxiously.
“Ubaka is saying that at the end of the road ahead lies the valley of the Ili where are the graves of their fathers. There the gate in the sky can be seen, and the souls of the old Torguts may look down upon them.”
“And what is the will of the council?” asked Nadesha, nibbling again at a date.
“Wait! And you will hear with your own ears.”
Loosang motioned her back into the shadows behind him. Nadesha heard a small bell tinkle over her head several times. Soon came a footfall outside and a voice familiar to her.
“Norbo, Master of the Herds, is here to speak with the chutuktu. The sarga seeks the wisdom of the priest.”
It occurred to her for the first time that Loosang had a watcher posted outside the tent in the shadow of the side of the gorge and that this man warned Loosang by ringing the bell of the approach of others. She smiled at the way her father clipped his words. Norbo had no love for Loosang, who opposed the old traditions of the Tatars cherished during the long stay in Russia.
Loosang, the priest, made a sign for Nadesha to remain quiet, where she could not be seen.
Norbo sat just within the yurt entrance facing the fire.
“Ubaka, our Khan,” began Norbo bluntly, “has spoken in council. He says rightly that we should seek the skies of our old home. So does Zebek Dortshi say. But many of the noyons are wavering. So the vote was to send for your word.”
Plainly the old chief did not relish his mission. The lines in his leathern face were deep as he scowled at Loosang through the heavy smoke.
As Loosang kept silence, Norbo repeated surlily.
“To press on, or turn our horses’ heads? What is your word? For my part I follow Ubaka to the Ili with my clan.”
The hand of the priest scattered more roots thickly in the fire.
“Look!” he croaked suddenly.
The glow of the flames died and a swirl of gray smoke swept up. Out of the smoke a stunted tree took form. Nadesha could even see branches in the semi darkness.
She caught her breath and looked again. The tree was standing there, upright in the coils of smoke. Then a flicker of fire crept up, blazed, and the likeness of the tree was gone.
Norbo glanced up at the ceiling, then at Loosang and bit his mustache.
“Go!” ordered the priest. “Say to the council you have seen an omen.”
“What means the omen, chutuktu?”
“This. Out of fire and smoke will grow up the roof tree of the Torguts. The clans must go to their own land. I will show them the way.”
Norbo’s shrewd eyes snapped.
“Ai-a, that was the word of the mighty Genghis. It is a good word.”
When he was gone, Loosang rose and stretched, chuckling to himself.
“You have heard, my little owlet. Th€ lion asks counsel of the leopard. The lion thought he was strong and swift, but the steppe is wide. Oh, the steppe has a voice and a lure. It is like a fair woman. Men give their lives up to it. Now the lion limps, for he is lame—lame.”
While speaking he walked slowly to the side of the hearth by the open flap, tossing upon the embers some brown powder he had taken from his robe. Again a thick smoke came up to the tent top where there was not the customary air vent. Nadesha choked.
Suddenly she sprang up with a cry. The fumes were strangling her. She started to run past the fire, holding her sleeve against her mouth, but Loosang thrust the girl back. Wavering, she sank down to the floor, her eyes closed, her lungs laboring. The lama, standing in the fresher air, coughed, and presently stepped outside, drawing shut the flap behind him.
Still muttering to himself, he hastened to the gully behind the yurt where his two disciples had been busied during the greater part of the evening. They had built up a shrine of stones, in which were stuck sticks bearing shreds of rags. It was customary with Loosang to mark in this fashion the places where his yurt had stood.
Now when he came to the pile of rocks the lama placed therein the bag of money Nadesha had given him and watched while the two men covered it up with more stones.
“For him who travels in the desert,” he laughed quietly, “a landmark.”
CHAPTER V
Loosang Sleeps
Rain was falling thinly as the Master of the Herds rode to find the quarters of his clan. The sky was broken—a cloudy dawn.
Norbo’s powerful arms swung against his hips. Dried blood had stiffened one side of him, where shoulder and hip had been cut open by an enemy’s sword. He had not eaten for two nights and a day, but tied to the peak of his wooden saddle was a hind quarter of an antelope, given to Norbo by a hunting party that he had met coming in from the marshes.
The old chieftain rode with his head raised. He was looking for the fires in the sky5 that he had heard were to be seen above the valley of the Ili.
Very tired was Norbo, and he felt he would like to ride up into the gate where the souls of the elder heroes would come to meet him and all would have horses’ meat and drink. He had been near to the gate that night, for the Baskir tribesmen had attacked the rear of the Horde in force.
Picking
its way among huddles of soaked men and women, who lay sometimes half submerged in water, the pony by instinct sought out its own clan. Norbo remembered a dawn last Winter when he had passed by such silent groups, among them the body of his sister. The Tatars had frozen when fuel for the fires had given out.
“By the mane of my grandsire,” he growled under his breath, “there is one who lies at ease.”
His eye had lighted on the yurt of Loosang. Nearly all of the Torguts’ wagons had fallen to pieces or been broken up for firewood; Loosang’s was intact. The lama had given out word that he was about to sleep, in a trance, for nine days. During the nine days no one was to come within a spear’s cast of his yurt.
Two disciples of the lama, armed, kept watch by the carved and painted wagon. Norbo saw that a flag of yellow silk flapped above the wagon shaft. It was a prayer flag, and it had been hoisted when Loosang went into the trance.
His own yurt, together with that of the Khan, having been split up to be made into fresh spear hafts, Norbo’s camp consisted only of a felt tent before which a half-dozen ponies stood obediently. He dismounted stiffly and splashed through a puddle, to peer into the entrance.
“Nadesha,” he summoned, “I have meat; cook it. The clan must go forward within an hour.”
Instead of the girl Billings crawled out of the tent. His cheeks were pinched but shaven clear. After drinking from a bowl that had stood outside during the night, he offered it to the noyon without result and then emptied it over his head.
“Nadesha has not been here for a day and a night, uncle,” he drawled.
Then after shaking the water from his hair and rubbing it from his eyes he set to work with flint, steel and a pinch of powder to ignite some dry leaves and twigs he had kept dry in his blanket.
This done, the two men gave all their attention to nourishing the flame, first with broken pine branches, gathered during the last day’s march against the possibility of food to be cooked, and then with damp birch sticks culled from a near-by thicket.
As the crackling grew, the smoke thickened and the odor of sizzling meat spread in the air, men came to stand and look at the two. Norbo, who was gulping down his portion half-scorched, motioned them to come and partake of the meat.